The present invention relates to a semiconductor device and a control method of a semiconductor device.
An SoC (System-on-a-chip) is a semiconductor chip in which a plurality of functions are integrated. The SoC includes a plurality of CPUs. In the SoC, a plurality of applications are performed at the same time. In recent years, upsizing of the SoC is advanced by performance improvement of a system on which the SoC is mounted.
In the SoC, an operation request to a hardware IP (Intellectual Property) of the semiconductor chip may be received from a plurality of applications at the same time. The hardware IP is partial circuit information collected for each function to form the semiconductor chip and is information implemented by hardware. In this case, it is necessary to arbitrate operation requests conflicting with each other in order to avoid malfunction and the like.
As a method of such arbitration, a method that arbitrates operation requests conflicting with each other by software processing is proposed (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-140290). In this method, priorities are adjusted by performing communication between a plurality of CPUs and a shared resource is used based on a result of the adjustment.
Another method that arbitrates operation requests conflicting with each other by software processing is also proposed (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2011-232956). In this method, an operating system and/or an application (software) perform semaphore management, so that the right of use of shared resource is acquired.